Innovation Stories From Around The Globe

This past weekend, Branch Metrics sponsored AngelHack’s SF hackathon. AngelHack is the pioneer in hosting innovation events and hackathons on a global scale. This year’s SF hackathon was held in MuleSoft’s beautiful office in downtown San Francisco. As if that wasn’t enough, MuleSoft even cleared out all their desks and workstations on the entire 4th floor, giving competitors access to their awesome monitors and ergonomic chairs.

On Saturday, attendees were welcomed with the smell of breakfast in the kitchen and an excited AngelHack team. From there, they visited the sponsor area to meet exhibitors and learn more about the challenges and prizes that were up for grabs. Sponsor giveaways included candy, swag, Amazon gift cards, Nerf guns, and even some Oculus Rifts! After eating our fill for the morning, we moved to the main stage where Brian Collins took over as MC for the weekend. With his booming voice, Brian successfully roused competitive spirits before handing the mainstage over to competitors for idea pitches!

After a slew of ideas and self promotion, some 40 teams were forged and the hacking commenced. As I walked the 4th floor I saw brainstorming sessions popping up everywhere, as windows became whiteboards, meeting rooms turned into incubators, and workstations into temporary housing. Watching from a distance I could feel the passion and determination in each attendee. Some hackers were taking on new ideas and new technologies for the very first time. Despite the wide range in age, background, and expertise everyone went home with new lessons and new friends.

We arrived the next morning to find sleepy-eyed developers tirelessly hacking away. Bugs and broken code had kept some of the attendees up most of the night, however, competitors pushed through hurdles, and when the dust settled we were left with 33 awesome submissions.

Some of the problems that competitors chose to tackle were: water conservation (SmartDrain), transactional email A/B testing (Angel Mail), gamification of personal development (YOLObeat), connecting sellers and buyers for real estate (cinch), finding a dinner date (Dinner Tonight), and emergency calling (MyoResponse), just to name a few.

We were blown away by the talent and creativity at this year’s AngelHack SF. A special congratulations goes to the team, Huddle, which took home the 1st place prize. Branch Metrics was very happy to award two Jambox’s to the winners for their awesome app idea. Huddle even implemented Branch deeplinks to improve the sharing of in-app content. Keep a lookout for a future blog post on Huddle and the team behind the app.

We had a great time this past weekend and we wanted to thank Brian and the entire AngleHack team for putting on yet another amazing hackathon. The weekend was filled with great food, awesome people, and even better apps. If you missed out on AngelHack SF, make sure you check out AngelHack Silicon Valley on July 18-19th and visit Branch Metrics in the sponsor area to find out how you can win!

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AngelHack aims to drive open innovation that positively impacts the world, and bridges the gap between Silicon Valley and entrepreneurs globally through hackathons, virtual competitions, accelerator programs, Meetups, and various developer initiatives to over 100 cities around the globe.